Heartland has Long History of Blowing Smoke

Heartland has Long History of Blowing Smoke

One of the most bizarre reactions to the St. Valetines Day Striptease, in which the Heartland Institute was tempted by a mild-mnannered scientist to completely expose itself - its strategies, funders and plans for the new year - is the complaint by “neutral” observers like Judith Curry that people were somehow picking on Heartland unfairly.

Even aside from the reams of evidence in the Striptease documents, Heartland has a long history of mining money from questionable corporate funders and then representing itself as a (taxpayer subsidized) “think tank” - as if its some kind of educational organization contributing to the public conversation about difficult issues.

The document - and Heartland's own self-celebrating promotional efforts - make absolutely clear that Heartland is a lobbyist, and given that its favourite client through the years has been the tobacco industry, we know for sure it's a lobbyist with no particular standards.

Here, as evidence toward that point, is a wonderful wrap, by the blog Planet 3.0/Beyond Sustainability of Heartland's history of blowing smoke on behalf of funders Philip Morris, et al.

Speaker of the House Boehner says CO2 emissions nothing to worry about because humans breathe CO2 in and out.
Excuse me speaker, ever hear of the greenhouse effect?

Michelle Bachman says there have been no scientific studies showing CO2 is harmful.
I guess she missed the 10,000 (up to about 2006) published research papers that show that CO2 causes global warming. There are thousands more research papers since then. Hundreds of papers are published every week relating to climate

Rick Perry likens himself and other deniers to Galileo.
Sorry Rick, but Galileo was correct and had the evidence.
You are wrong and have no evidence, while ignoring the mountain of evidence for AGW. (AGW = anthropogenic global warming - man made)
Perry and the rest are more like the religious authorities who persecued Galileo.

GOP Rep Fred Upton says there can be no global warming because God won’t allow it to happen.

And of course Sen Inhofe says its all a big hoax.
Sure Senator, the entire world scientific community is just trying to get more grant money.

And of course, Sen Inhofe (R Oklahoma) liked to invite science fiction writer Michael Crichton as an “expert witness” on climate change.
Apparently all you have to do is a write nonsense novel to be invited as an expert.

Republican Joe Barton introduced Monckton to a U.S. House committee hearing as an expert witness on climate change

Barton (R-TX) describes Christopher Monckton

“as being generally regarded as one of the most knowledgeable, if not the most knowledgeable, experts on the skeptic side.”

Monckton is NOT A SCIENTIST

Viscount Monckton as he likes to be called, who the GOP loves to call as an expert witness on climate change, is not a scientist of any kind. His only higher education is in journalism. Monckton is a complete charlatan, who has been completely and devastatingly debunked on many occasions by real scientists. The GOP has at least twice had him as an expert witness on climate change, at important House Committee hearings.

Monckton had been told twice by the British House of Lords, to stop claiming he is a member. Yet he intoduces himself to U.S. congress as an emissary from Parliament. He embellishes all his fake temperature charts, etc and other publications, with a very close facsimlie of the seal of Parliament, the crowned porcullis. They have told him to stop using their seal.
He claims to have discovered cures for HIV, the flu, the cold, Graves disease. He claims to have been a science advisor to Margaret Thatcher. He never was.

He is looney beyond belief, IMO. And he is well paid by the Koch brothers and others, to spread confusion. Monckton is a showman, very persuasive in front of an audience and knows how to sound scientific, while spreading complete nonsense.

Barton and Inhofe get more oil money than any other legislators, in the House and Senate, respectively.

“As for Ron Paul I figure we could be forgiven for thinking that he admired Ayan Rand given his son’s christian name which could give an idea of his ideology base.”

He has stated on record before that he did not name his son Rand after Ayn Rand, but he has also gone on record to say he was a big Ayn Rand fan. Something is not right there.

I used to like Ron Paul, but like anything, you drill down, find out the whole story and your perceptions change.

People who call themselves Libertarians like Ron Paul are just factitious antipodals to Libertarianism. He reminds me of people that call themselves religious (Christian/Muslim/Jew) but do not adhere to the teachings of their religious text.

Ayn Rand would be horrified at people like Ron Paul and visciously oppose him were she alive. He is anti-abortion, against gay marriage and is pro religion, whereas Ayn Rand was the polar opposite. I guess he knows who his campaign funders are and who his core constituents are and needs to create a hybrid libertarian model to incorporate their contradictory views.

How does Ron Paul reconcile his lets bring the troops back home, all wars are wrong, with many of his voter block who say, lets bomb shit out of the Muslims because they are all terrorists? Church on Sunday, lets bomb shit out of them on Monday.

“So, even though folks like us have long since forgotten about him, they keep hearing more from the Exxon hate machine.”

Oilman, WUWT must have an Al Gore allowance then also, as they have at least one article a week just on Al Gore. He doesn’t even have a very big prescence on the world stage anymore in regards to climate change, yet the deniers are still hurting from Inconvenient Truth. It’s like the are living a perpetual nightmare where like Jesus & B.C & A.D, there is B.I ( Before Inconvenient truth…….which was nothing wasn’t it?) & A.I ( After Inconvenient Truth) where he created climate change and the masses gravitated to him.

In the deniers mind, that was AGW’s inception & if they had a time machine & snipers rifle, we wouldn’t be talking about what we are talking about now. Al Gore must be made to pay for that disturbance of utopia.

Gleick spoke at the annual California Water Policy Conference in Los Angeles and was warmly received by a crowd of roughly 300 California scientists, regulators and advocates.

“At this point I am going to let my last Huffington Post piece and the Heartland documents speak for themselves.”

“Those who deny this science and this evidence are becoming increasingly desperate in their efforts to attack the science and scientists and fool the public and prevent any rational discussion of a climate or energy policy from being adopted,” he said in his remarks.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.

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With the news of Willie Soon's fossil-fuel-funded career featured on the front page of The New York Times on Sunday, there's no time like the present to take a look at all of Soon's friends in the anti-science climate denial echo chamber.